12% of exit pollers in US non-religious

Stercus Accidit

... and 17% "never" attend religious services. These figures are taken from the MSNBC exit poll which is available here http://elections.msnbc.msn.com/ns/politics/2012/all/president/#.UJnSsGl27YL .

I think this is pretty interesting, and you can see the various breakdowns of age, religion and who a demographic is most likely to vote for.

fitz0

Is that the sun I see breaking through the clouds?

Galvasean

That's interesting. I'd have imagined it would have been <5%

General Relativity

And in other news;

• Colorado and Washington have voted to leaglise pot, with Washington voting to leagalize gay marriage.
• Massachusetts has voted on euthanasia which is neck and neck.
• Maryland voting to leagalize gay marriage and also voted to relax laws on illegal immegrant children, giving them rights to education.
• Not to mention there's a two time elected black president.

You done good 'Murica, you done real good.

yeppydeppy

Galvasean wrote: »

That's interesting. I'd have imagined it would have been <5%

That's because the rest of them are so vocal about their God bless this and God bless that and God bless America.

Peregrinus

Galvasean wrote: »

That's interesting. I'd have imagined it would have been <5%

Much higher, I think. A few months back the Pew Forum published the results of a fairly major survey which found that almost 6% of the US public identify as atheist or agnostic, and a further 13% as “nothing in particular”, making a total (after rounding) of 20% of Americans with no religious affiliation.

The “nothing in particulars” presumably include a cohort who would consider themselves “spiritual but not religious” or something of the kind, and another cohort who have no religious belief and/or no religious engagement, but maybe don’t feel strongly enough to own a label like “atheist” or “agnostic”.

Still, the 12% figure for voters who are non-religious, and the 17% figure for those never attend religious services, are if anything a little light compared to the 20% of Americans who have no religious affiliation. But this may be accounted for by margins of error, and/or by the fact that the two surveys invited people to describe themselves using slightly different terms. (Alternatively, it may be accounted for if the non-religious have a lesser propensity to vote than the population at large, but I'm inclined to doubt this.)

What does surprise me is that 26% of the voters who had no religion, and 34% of the voters who never attend religious services, voted for Romney. That suggests that even among non-religious voters, there’s a fairly substantial minority who don’t find Republican pietistic religiosity off-putting.

Stercus Accidit

It really is an eye opener to see the numbers for who voted for Romney, while his defeat was pretty complete, he still got 48% of the popular vote. It's hard to imagine given our outsider perspective fuelled by the open forum of the internet to see how the bad guy from Bain, who retroactively stepped down as CEO, had so many people vote for him.

Rented Mule

Stercus Accidit wrote: »

It really is an eye opener to see the numbers for who voted for Romney, while his defeat was pretty complete, he still got 48% of the popular vote. It's hard to imagine given our outsider perspective fuelled by the open forum of the internet to see how the bad guy from Bain, who retroactively stepped down as CEO, had so many people vote for him.

The little joys of the two party system and the single interest voter.

ShooterSF

General Relativity wrote: »

And in other news;

• Colorado and Washington have voted to leaglise pot, with Washington voting to leagalize gay marriage.
• Massachusetts has voted on euthanasia which is neck and neck.
• Maryland voting to leagalize gay marriage and also voted to relax laws on illegal immegrant children, giving them rights to education.
• Not to mention there's a two time elected black president.

You done good 'Murica, you done real good.

Looks like they're gonna be getting a new flag soon too!

Sarky

No doubt run_to_da_hills has already gone to Paddy Power with a bet the new flag will come back from the printer with "Liberate Tutamet Ex Infernis" written across it.

ShooterSF

Sarky wrote: »

No doubt run_to_da_hills has already gone to Paddy Power with a bet the new flag will come back from the printer with "Liberate Tutamet Ex Infernis" written across it.

I just want to buy shares in whatever product is used to make flags. They have a lot to change!

nagirrac

Peregrinus wrote: »

What does surprise me is that 26% of the voters who had no religion, and 34% of the voters who never attend religious services, voted for Romney. That suggests that even among non-religious voters, there’s a fairly substantial minority who don’t find Republican pietistic religiosity off-putting.

The biggest issue by far for Americans is the economy. Contrary to the myth about America being full of religious nuts, more and more people do not give a toss about the religious beliefs of a candidate. The fact that Romney is a Morman was hardly even mentioned during the election season. The reason Romney got 48% of votes is largely because those people felt he would do a better job managing the economy than Obama.

ShooterSF

nagirrac wrote: »

The biggest issue by far for Americans is the economy. Contrary to the myth about America being full of religious nuts, more and more people do not give a toss about the religious beliefs of a candidate. The fact that Romney is a Morman was hardly even mentioned during the election season. The reason Romney got 48% of votes is largely because those people felt he would do a better job managing the economy than Obama.

That doesn't seem 100% true. Romney ran more aligned to the views of major religions on social issues and I can't see it as coincidence that the following results showed up for percentage that voted for him compared to how often they attended a church:
More than once a week 63
Once a week 58
A few times a month 44
A few times a year 42
Never 34

Now that might all be coincidence but it's unlikely.

Peregrinus

It's not coincidence, but it's partly "noise" rather than a direct correlation.

Church attendance is positively correlated with age (as in, the older you are, the more likely it is you go to church). Social conservatism is also positively correlated with age. So people aren't necessarily voting for Mitt because they go to church; rather, they vote for Mitt, and go to church, because they are middle-aged or older.

Of course, given the data, you can control for age, and then get a better idea of the underlying correlation between church attendance and Mitt-voting. My guess is that there is a correlation, but it's not a strong as this data would suggest at first glance.

ShooterSF

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's not coincidence, but it's partly "noise" rather than a direct correlation.

Church attendance is positively correlated with age (as in, the older you are, the more likely it is you go to church). Social conservatism is also positively correlated with age. So people aren't necessarily voting for Mitt because they go to church; rather, they vote for Mitt, and go to church, because they are middle-aged or older.

Of course, given the data, you can control for age, and then get a better idea of the underlying correlation between church attendance and Mitt-voting. My guess is that there is a correlation, but it's not a strong as this data would suggest at first glance.

That would make sense alright but it still takes away from the argument that the biggest reason people voted for Romney was to do with how they thought he would handle the economy. I don't think people vote for people that hold the same religion, sure Obama didn't even have a majority amongst his own religious group. But they do vote based on their beliefs about social issues which are often taken from their religion.

Think of all the Catholics in the Northeast who all vote Democrat, same around Illinois. Think of the massive proportion of Evangelical blacks who vote Democrat, same with many "hispanics" around California. The Republicans have nowhere near a monopoly on the religious, devout or otherwise.

nagirrac

ShooterSF wrote: »

That would make sense alright but it still takes away from the argument that the biggest reason people voted for Romney was to do with how they thought he would handle the economy. I don't think people vote for people that hold the same religion, sure Obama didn't even have a majority amongst his own religious group. But they do vote based on their beliefs about social issues which are often taken from their religion.

I was responding to the question Perigrinus raised on why people identifying as "non religious" or "not attending religious services" would vote for Romney. They would vote for Romney because they are fiscal conservatives and do not agree with the direction the country is heading in economically under Obama (conveniently ignoring the role Republicans played in where the country is ecomomically). There is a strong "every man for himself" sentiment in America and it is particular strong among white male voters. Of course theres a huge number of people, particularly fundamentalist, who voted for Romney based on social issues but there is also a sizable number who vote almost exclusively on economic issues. In summary, they may not care so much about social issues but have a strong bias to the Republican candidate on economic issues.

eyescreamcone

Romney won the male vote
Obama won the female vote by a little more

Some voters were religious - some were not!